ABOUT

Maria Pääkkönen is a visual artist based in the Helsinki metropolitan area who works extensively with drawing. Their work ranges from small-scale pencil drawings to monumental drawing installations and durational drawing performances, which they create in collaboration with Oslo-based visual artist Ingeborg Blom Andersskog. Recurring themes in Pääkkönen’s work include time, change and memory, the viewing experience, the body, and the relationships between people and the environment. The focused, memory-based drawing process and the space in which it takes place play an important part in Pääkkönen’s work. The drawings built with repetitive pencil marks can be seen as recordings of temporality and the bodily presence at the moment of drawing.

“The art of Maria Pääkkönen concerns itself with a reciprocal relationship between drawing and place. On the one hand is the drawing of the place – that which is observed, recorded, remembered, evoked. On the other is the place of the drawing – its physical presence within the confines of the gallery. Somewhere in between the two is the human body.” – Tom Jeffreys, writer and editor

CV (short)

Maria Mio Pääkkönen
b. 1988 in Riihimäki, Finland

Education

2010 – 2016 Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, The University of the Arts, Helsinki (Master of Fine Arts, MFA)

2007 – 2010 Free Art School, Helsinki

Solo exhibitions 

2025 Aikaikkuna / Time Frame, Galleria G, Helsinki

2024 Vuotokohtia, Galleria Ratamo, Jyväskylä

2022 Olio, Galerie Pleiku, Berlin

2021 The Shadow of Uncertainty Sheds Light on Possibilities, Helsinki Artists’ Association Gallery, Suomenlinna, Helsinki

2020 Sumun maa, Galleria Uusi Kipinä, Lahti

2019 Distant And Vivid, Porvoo Kunsthalle

2018 Sea Dreams, Studio Kura, Itoshima, Japan

2018 Mountains Collapsing, B-galleria, Turku

2016 Entering Another Unknown Place, Ti-la2016, Jyväskylä

2016 Revisiting Unknown Places, Galleria Ratamo, Jyväskylä

2016 Revisiting Unknown Places, Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari, Helsinki

Group and collaborative exhibitions

2025 Muta, Kuumuus & Paine, duo exhibition with Henna Jula, Center of Contemporary Art Pispala, Hirvitalo, Tampere

2024 XXVIII Mänttä Art Festival

2022 20th anniversary exhibition of Galleria Huuto, Helsinki

2022 Muuttujat, exhibition with Sanna Horvath, Poriginal Galleria, Pori, Finland

2022 Drawing Down the Moon, durational drawing performance and exhibition with Ingeborg Blom Andersskog, Visningsrommet USF, Bergen, Norway

2020 Kosminen Salonki – summer sales exhibition, Kosminen, Helsinki

2017 Seeing Whales, curated by Chiara Ianeselli, Galleria Mazzoli, Modena, Italy

2017 Van Eyck Open Studios, Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands

2016 SYYT, Union of Finnish Art Associations, Art Center Haihatus, Joutsa

2016 Kuvitella / kokea / kerääntyä, Vanhan Raatihuoneen galleria, Turku

2015 Kuvan Kevät – MFA degree show of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki

2014 Sitting Quietly, Doing Nothing, Kuva/Tila (Exhibition Laboratory), Helsinki

Performances

2024 UNREADY, durational drawing performance and installation with Ingeborg Blom Andersskog, XXVII Mänttä Art Festival

2022 Drawing Down the Moon, durational drawing performance and exhibition with Ingeborg Blom Andersskog, Visningsrommet USF, Bergen, Norway

2019 You Are I Am You, durational drawing performance with Ingeborg Blom Andersskog, Superb! -contemporary art festival, Turku

2017 Just Drawing This Line, solo drawing performance, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht

2016 Entering Another Unknown Place, durational drawing performance, Ti-la2016, Jyväskylä

2014 The Builder (Sitting Quietly, Doing Nothing), durational drawing performance, Kuva/Tila, Helsinki

Residencies and workshops

2024 Mustarinda, Hyrynsalmi, Finland

2019 Residency in Utö, Kuvan residenssi ry, Finland

2018 Mustarinda, Hyrynsalmi, Finland

2018 Studio Kura, Itoshima, Japan

2016-17 Jan Van Eyck Academie, 15 months residency, Maastricht, Netherlands

2016 Nordic Studio: Clearcut, Rejmyre Art Lab, Kalbo, Sweden

2016, 2015, 2014 Residency in Utö, Kuvan residenssi ry

2014 Finnish Academy of Fine Arts residency in Berlin

Memberships

The Finnish Painters’ Union

Galleria Huuto / Mehiläispesä ry

Works in collections

the State Art Deposit Collection, Finnish National Gallery

Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation

Jyväskylä art museum

private collections

ARTICLES

https://taidelehti.fi/nahtyja-4-25/

https://www.ksml.fi/paikalliset/7335012

https://uumen.art/2023/04/17/kaksoisroolissa-maria-paakkonen-taiteesta-ja-aktivismista/